Grim Fandango Deluxe - Original Thread [Locked]

somaen · Post by **somaen** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 6:26 pm

No, I mentioned that in my earlier post (rerendering out-of-engine), and I'm not arguing against it, only against full-3D free-camera.

Jon N/A · Post by **Jon N/A** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 7:05 pm

somaen wrote:No, I mentioned that in my earlier post (re-rendering out-of-engine), and I'm not arguing against it, only against full-3D free-camera.

Oh. OK. I thought you were talking about an in-game 3D environment renderer.

OK, So ... I maybe of some help recreating the backgrounds in 3D. I need the backgrounds to use as references.
ThunderPeel2001, If you're interested, I'd PM you my e-mail address. I have a Dropbox account too if you have one we can share a folder for sending and receiving files instead of e-mails...

JohnnyWalker2001 · Post by **JohnnyWalker2001** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 7:18 pm

somaen wrote:EDIT:
JohnnyWalker2001: Animations shouldn't need changing as long as you don't do any radical changes to the meshes. (And, I think I might have missed a thing or two in reading the animdata, judging from your results). The main point was that transplanting the data back, would mean completely untouched hierarchy-data, which should ensure that the animations work. (And, allow for a little more lawyer-proofedness on the distribution too, by actually letting it be a patch to the files )

That sounds perfect!

JohnnyWalker2001 · Post by **JohnnyWalker2001** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 7:24 pm

Jon N/A wrote:
somaen wrote:No, I mentioned that in my earlier post (re-rendering out-of-engine), and I'm not arguing against it, only against full-3D free-camera.
Oh. OK. I thought you very talking about an in-game 3D environment renderer.

OK, So ... I maybe of some help recreating the backgrounds in 3D. I need the backgrounds to use as references.
ThunderPeel2001, If you're interested, I'd PM you my e-mail address. I have a Dropbox account too if you have one we can share a folder for sending and receiving files instead of e-mails...

By all means, please go ahead and try and re-render the backgrounds in a higher resolution. You can use ScummRev to extract the game backgrounds from the five dataxxx.lab files. If you need help, let me know.

Jon N/A · Post by **Jon N/A** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 7:27 pm

JohnnyWalker2001 wrote:By all means, please go ahead and try and re-render the backgrounds in a higher resolution. You can use ScummRev to extract the game backgrounds from the five dataxxx.lab files. If you need help, let me know.

Sure.
OK, Let's see what can be done ...

cplhenshaw · Post by **cplhenshaw** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 10:11 pm

I've had a go at writing some code to convert from .obj back to .3do and managed to get it working at a very basic level. It's not reading in material names or anything (it just chooses the first material for now) and also doesn't handle any of the rotations of the meshes (which are present in later files). Plus I think the normals may be wrong too.

Basically I just got it to the point where it will somewhat work and figured I'd put it up if you guys want to try out.

The program: http://www.mediafire.com/?kxw4n3bqc9hw8d8

I'm not sure which 3d modelling programs people want to use but there are a few considerations for the .obj file.

It should be split into "object groups" i.e in the .obj there are lines of the form "o groupname" for each piece of the model
The group name should either equal or contain the original mesh name.

Anyway I'm pretty tired now so I'm going to sleep and dream of a two headed Manny encased in some kind of weird bodysuit.

somaen · Post by **somaen** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 2:50 am

well, just "o [number]" per mesh should probably keep enough information to be able to reconstruct it (depending on what the modelling program does to missing materials). same goes for "m [number]" to keep hold of the material, do keep in mind that some meshes need to be marked with colourmap too though.

As a side-note, ResidualVM does support loading text-3DOs, which makes for easier transplanting of the unchanged stuff.

EDIT: Just to note, I didnt actually look at your tool, as I'm on a mac... So it might already convert to text-3DOs for all I know.

jain7th · Post by **jain7th** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 10:30 am

Hey, I'd like to help the project. I can work with Photoshop and Illustrator and have done some work with 3D.

Is there something I can do to help the project yet, or should I wait for a complete extraction of the meshes and textures and get to work then?

somaen · Post by **somaen** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 5:31 pm

The textures and backgrounds are already extractable.

cplhenshaw · Post by **cplhenshaw** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 8:48 pm

Yeah, I should have mentioned this is writing out the binary .3do format. Basically the way it is working is that you call it with something like "obj3do mannysuit.3do updatedmanny.obj outputname.3do"

It reads in the original 3do and the updated obj file. Then for every mesh in the original it checks to see if there is a corresponding group in the .obj file (hence checking for a similar name) and if it finds one it updates the information, then writes it all back out to a binary .3do

On a side note you mention some meshes are marked with a colourmap. Are you familiar with how the game indicates with colourmap should be used with each material (or face)?

somaen · Post by **somaen** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 11:38 pm

Not well enough to give a clear answer, but I do remember the sources being quite clear on this.

JohnnyWalker2001 · Post by **JohnnyWalker2001** » Mon Aug 29, 2011 12:57 am

jain7th wrote:Hey, I'd like to hello the project. I can work with Photoshop and Illustrator and have done some work with 3D.

Is there something I can do to help the project yet, or should I wait for a complete extraction of the meshes and textures and get to work then?

Hello! Thanks for your offer of help. You can indeed start increasing the resolution of the textures now, if you like. I plan to write a blog post soon explaining how, for those who are unsure.

One thing you should know: We're going for 4 times the existing size of a given texture.

Thanks again, I'll let you know when the blog post is up.

JohnnyWalker2001 · Post by **JohnnyWalker2001** » Mon Aug 29, 2011 6:28 pm

re: Converting obj to 3do

cplhenshaw wrote:Yeah, I should have mentioned this is writing out the binary .3do format. Basically the way it is working is that you call it with something like "obj3do mannysuit.3do updatedmanny.obj outputname.3do"

It reads in the original 3do and the updated obj file. Then for every mesh in the original it checks to see if there is a corresponding group in the .obj file (hence checking for a similar name) and if it finds one it updates the information, then writes it all back out to a binary .3do

That's fantastic, cplhenshaw. I didn't fully understand what was being discussed straight away, as I only skim read what you wrote. (I've been away for two weeks and a lot of my browsing has been done over my phone, which is less than ideal.) Great job on making headway with a tool like this.

But what do we think the best route is, then? There seems to be pros and cons to both suggested paths...

JohnnyWalker2001 · Post by **JohnnyWalker2001** » Mon Aug 29, 2011 6:32 pm

Re: Matching textures to their .cmp files.

somaen wrote:Not well enough to give a clear answer, but I do remember the sources being quite clear on this.

I'll hunt around and see if I can figure out what's going on then.

It would be awesome if someone could put together a tool to extract all the artwork with the right .cmp files. At the moment it's just a very slow process of trial and error for me. (I wonder if BGBennyBoy would be interested -- it seems like it might fit into his collection of tools.)

A complete text list of how they relate would be good, too. I have a partial list of texture->cmp relationships, thanks to cplhenshaw, but looking at his Model Viewer it seems that even this list isn't always 100% right :-/

JohnnyWalker2001 · Post by **JohnnyWalker2001** » Mon Aug 29, 2011 7:09 pm

I had an idea. I compared the text .3do from the demo vs the text .3do made from your tool, somaen:

Demo:
http://www.thunderpeel2001.com/grim/mannysuit-text.3do

Converted:
http://www.thunderpeel2001.com/grim/man ... verted.3do

I've no idea if that's any help... but I imagine not, considering just how different they are.